by J. C. Staudt
“Man in a position like that deserves a quick death,” he said when they were a hundred fathoms further on. “Worth the lead.”
The Scorpion’s Uncle was a madhouse when they arrived, its patrons spilling onto the streets in a frenzy over the earthquakes. A quick check inside revealed the saloon to be packed, though Daxin Glaive was nowhere to be found. Weaver met Toler and Lokes outside to tell them the news.
“Well, I guess I’d better head home then,” Toler said with a hopeful grin.
“Not so fast, Shep. We’re late. Might be he showed up earlier and took off when he didn’t see us. Gotta do a little asking around. We’ll find him… don’t you worry.”
“I’m not.”
They booked a room at The Foundry, an old machine factory across the street which had been converted into a hotel. Weaver and Lokes had stayed there before. Its rooms were as dingy and musty as the city south itself, but its guarded stables and monitored hallways were worth the price of admission. Plus, it beat sleeping in an alley or an abandoned building.
Lokes returned to the saloon for a beer while Weaver took Toler upstairs to their room. She pulled aside the thin yellowed curtain and scanned the narrow street below, where Lokes was working his way through the crowd outside the saloon’s entrance, making nice with the locals. He could be a real charmer when he needed to be.
Toler sat on the bed behind her, bound hands resting in his lap. He’d been playing it cool since they arrived, but she could tell he was a bundle of nerves. “So where are you two headed next? After you drop me off in the care of my mentally unstable brother?”
Lokes had warned her about the shepherd probing them for information.
“We ain’t headed nowhere too quick. I figure we ought to hang around and see what he does with you.” She glanced back at him. “You know, just for shits.”
“I’ll be fine,” Toler said. “I’ll play his little game, whatever it might be, and then I’ll be off home again.” He smiled a sinister smile.
Weaver supposed it was none of her concern what happened after the job was done. But there was something about Daxin Glaive; something about his look, and about the amount of hardware he’d been carrying around with him. Ordinary people didn’t throw those kinds of resources around without regard for their value. Daxin had been set on something else. Determined. Hiring protection for his brother had been an afterthought to whatever he’d been doing. Vantanible’s empire won’t be long for this world, his letter had said. I’m sending these folks to spare you from the war that’s coming. What had he meant by that?
“Still no sign of the southerner down there,” Lokes said when he returned half an hour later.
“Were we too late?”
“That’s the strange thing… he’s the one who’s late. Ain’t nobody seen him for weeks. Barman says the last time he remembers him coming around is the day he hired us. Says he’ll let him know we was looking for him, if’n he does show up. Guess all we can do now is wait. You better hope he turns up, Shep.”
“Coff on you, pal. It’s not my fault if he doesn’t show up. I don’t own the dway. What are you so uptight about?”
“I came here to get paid. That brother of yours don’t come through for me, I got no choice but to sell everything you got to make up for it. I know a fella looking for fresh man-bits. Might be he’d pay a handsome fee for a young dway like you.”
“If hardware’s what you need, I told you back in Unterberg I could’ve paid you to leave me there.”
Lokes sighed. “And I told you we had a deal with your brother. This one here, she got some moral dilemma about going back on our word. We need that hardware, and we ain’t got time to hike all the way back to Unterberg to pick it up. Speaking of hardware, you wouldn’t believe how much they’re charging for a beer down there. Highway robbery, I tell you. Word is, there’s been one train come in the last few months. One. Running low on everything, says the barman. Savages goin’ wild out there, worse than ever before. Say, you must know somethin’ ‘bout that, Shep. What’s all the fuss over?”
Toler’s face flushed. “I don’t know anything besides what Vantanible tells us. I haven’t been out on a train in a long time. Apparently the nomads have been more aggressive lately. They’ve been taking us by surprise, somehow. Who knows, maybe that’s what happened to Dax. He’s always been a nomad-lover. Maybe he finally found himself on the wrong end of a bone knife. Serve him right…”
Weaver noted the color rising in the shepherd’s cheeks. He ain’t telling us everything. I guess we ain’t telling him everything, neither. “Why do you hate your brother?”
Toler’s gaze was sharp. He spoke without doubt or hesitation. “My brother is the kind of dway who’d stomp on your toes for tying your shoelaces wrong. He believes there’s a right way to do everything, and he’s got no tolerance for anyone who says different. Cuddly as a cactus, my brother.”
“Sounds like he wants to make amends for whatever it is he done to you.”
“Then he should’ve come and said so himself.”
“He didn’t have a clue where you were when we met him,” Weaver said. “Said he was headed somewhere north and didn’t have time to track you down. That’s why he needed me.”
“He needed you because he’s a coward. The last time I saw him, he stabbed me in the coffing face. It’s no wonder he wants me tied up. All the easier to get me for good this time.”
Lokes cut in. “Hold on just a daggum minute. He’s your own flesh and blood, and you say he done stabbed you?” He whooped with laughter. “You wasn’t kidding, Shep. I thought my family was coffed up. Y’all are about the looniest screwballs I ever heard of. You both look so reg’lar, too.”
Toler took the jests in stride. “That’s not even the worst of it.”
“Oh, my. Go on,” said Lokes, boundlessly amused.
“I don’t want to get into it. The important thing is he’s not here. I’m trying to go home, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just be on my way.”
“Not even close, Shep. If he don’t show up by dayrise tomorrow, I’m sellin’ you off piecemeal to the highest bidder.”
Toler laughed.
Weaver knew Lokes wasn’t joking. He’d do as he promised, especially if he could get decent hardware for it. “Don’t scare the dway, Will,” she tried.
“Ain’t nobody scaring nobody,” said Lokes. “Just giving him fair warning. He can be yellow if he wants. Don’t bother me none.”
She sighed. If they didn’t find this Daxin dway soon, Toler was in trouble. Trying to stop Lokes from doing what he wanted seldom went well for her. Maybe another tack would yield better results. “So your brother’s a friend to the savages, is he?”
Toler nodded.
“I guess we ought to find us some savages, then. No one else around here seems to know where he’s at. Maybe they do.”
Lokes lit up like a fuse. “Shit, woman. You’re wackier than Shep, over here. You got a death wish or something? I got plenty of good years left in me, and so do you. No sense cutting our lives short on account of some southerner.”
“Well, Willis Lokes,” she said, resting a hand on her hip. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
He frowned, confused. “What day?”
“The day you’d turn yellow over a couple of savages. You never cease to amaze.”
Lokes straightened. “Now you listen here. I done said nothing of the kind. You the one ought to be afraid, what with the sand so far away and all. We get in over our heads on this one, that’s on you.” He pointed at her.
She hated when he pointed at her. It made her feel like he didn’t trust her, or he thought she needed help remembering who she was. “The savages trade with aions all the time. Why would we be in over our heads?”
“‘Cause they’ll take an aion slave as soon as trade with him. I ain’t no slave, and neither is Shep, here. Are you, Shep?” He knuckled Toler in the chest. “Besides… I don’t think I could bear to see my darlin’ hauled off
in chains.”
Weaver resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “That’d just break your heart, wouldn’t it?”
He frowned. “You’re breakin’ it right now, buttercup. You don’t believe me, do you?”
“You know I do,” she lied.
“Yeah, well…” he gave her a bland look. “Let’s get to it then, I guess. Gettin’ on toward afternoon, and no telling what them starwinds gonna cook up for us next.”
“I don’t feel so well,” Toler said.
Lokes collared the shepherd and hauled him up. “Good. You get a mind to run off again, maybe you’ll think twice.”
They gathered their things to leave, Toler grunting and grimacing as if fighting off some stomach-related urge. Weaver opened the door to let them out into the narrow hallway, locked it behind her, and slipped the old brass key into her pocket. The room was empty of their belongings now, but she didn’t know who was around and she didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Downstairs, the stable hands took their tickets and retrieved their horses.
“I forgot about what an upper-class place this is,” Lokes said with a grin. “Ain’t it nice to be around civilized folk for a change?” He prodded her with an elbow.
“I’ll say. Too fancy around here for folks like us.”
Lokes laughed, giving her a broad smile that made her heart race.
It was hard to stay mad at him. Weaver often tried, but somehow he always roped her back in. There was a soft side beneath that bristly exterior, and she couldn’t get enough of it. So what if he only gave her brief glimpses? She’d never had that kind of connection with anyone before. That made it worth taking the bad with the good.
Didn’t it?
The crowd outside the Scorpion’s Uncle had begun to thin out and shuffle back inside, convinced the quakes were over for now. They mounted and rode past at a walk. Lokes led the way while Weaver took up the rear to keep Toler between them. They made a slight right turn down a side lane, where another crowd parted to let the horses through.
It wasn’t until they were in the thick of the crowd that Weaver began to recognize a few of the faces within it. They were faces she didn’t like. Faces that brought back sour memories.
Before she could react, a hand reached up and took hold of Meldi’s bridle. Weaver looked down to see the familiar and unpleasant face of a woman staring back at her, a single white eye glistening in a field of ruddy wrinkles. The crone grinned, chapped lips sliding back to reveal rows of rotten teeth. Weaver called out for Lokes to stop.
Up ahead, Lokes had already reined up where a line of unsavory-looking characters stood to block his path. Weaver exhaled. She’d been hoping they wouldn’t run into the old gang before they located the southerner.
“I been wondering if you two was ever gonna show your purty faces ‘round here again,” said the woman holding Meldi’s reins. “I thought you might not. Thought we was gonna have to track you down.”
Portia LeMeire, Weaver knew. The gang called her Pretty Portia on account of her shriveled left eye, lidless where a rival posse had removed the flap of skin as a trophy. The blind eye was shot through with veins, red lightning bolts pulsing on a round white egg.
Tracking me across the wastes would be about as easy as taking a gander at your own rear end, Weaver wanted to say, but thought better of it.
“You done gave us the run-around long enough, Will,” said Hannigan Fink, the impossibly-slender man standing ahead of Lokes. His fur-lined duster was fraying at the hemline, the brim of his open crown hat cracked and spotted.
“Where’s the hardware, Lokes, ol’ pal?” asked Guy Ulrich, looking a midget beside Hannigan. His oversized dust goggles and the brengen skull he wore as a helmet made him look like some strange nocturnal creature.
Weaver recognized most of the others. There was Keeton Dunn, clad in livery sewn together from patches of a dozen different business suits; Lally McNally, the big-boned brawling woman who would’ve made a formidable match for any man, whether in the ring or between the sheets; and a fellow they called The Weasler, whose pets tunneled through and poked their furry heads out from beneath the thick layers of knitted clothing he wore.
There were new faces in the gang as well. A dark-skinned nomad with a beaded feather woven into his tangled black hair stared down from of the building tops, a long rifle in his hands. A figure in a hooded fur vest lurked in the shadows of a second-story window. He flexed his bare tattooed arms and gave Weaver a glittering smile, brandishing a longknife with a serrated blade.
“Now look here. We gonna get you dways your money,” Lokes was saying. “Matter of fact, that’s where we was just headed. Now ain’t the time to be stirring up trouble. ‘Sides, y’all don’t want what I got for you.” He bounced his eyebrows and tapped his sweeties.
He never stops making threats, even when he’s hopelessly outmanned, Weaver reflected with dismay. She would’ve felt better about the confrontation had it happened on the wastes. But the gang, of course, knew what she could do out there. That was why they’d waited until there was pavement beneath her feet.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Will,” said Hannigan.
“Wouldn’t dare,” Lokes said. “Promise goes for you, especially.” He pointed a finger in the shape of a gun and mimed pulling the trigger.
Hannigan Fink cracked a smile. “Y’ain’t getting no wiser in your old age, I see.”
The patrons at the Scorpion’s Uncle were leaking outside to witness the spectacle, but the streets had grown quiet. Weaver shifted in her saddle, wondering what Lokes would do next. There was never any telling with him.
Lokes lifted his gambler and mopped his brow. “Wisdom is a dead man’s game, Fink. You gonna step aside so I can go make you some money, or we gonna sit here all day drowning in our own sweat?”
Fink’s smile faded. “You got ‘til nightfall. After dark, I tend to forget my manners.” He stepped aside, spreading his long, bony fingers down the street in a sweeping bow.
Lokes struck the reins to get Gish moving. Toler followed, and Weaver wasted no time. As she passed through the opening in the line of Fink’s men, Lally McNally slid a wet pink tongue over her lips and gave Weaver a rotten smile.
When they’d gone a few dozen fathoms down the street, Fink called after them. “Nightfall, Will. I see them stars ‘fore I see that purty face of yours, you ain’t gonna live long enough to regret it.”
CHAPTER 29
For the Greater Good
The ordeal of forming a clear thought seemed to Toler Glaive like trying to shave with a dull razor. His belly was sick and his bones felt like twisted rags. He’d been living under the terrible effects of the starwinds for too long now. Plenty of people were feeling their effects, but he always seemed to feel them more acutely than most. Had he been home, he could’ve rested. But I’m not at home, am I? I’m caught up with the two jokers hauling me across this Infernal-forsaken city, looking for bloodthirsty savages while we dodge the bandits who want them dead. “Fink’s the reason you need the hardware, isn’t he?”
“You get smarter by the minute, don’t you, Shep?”
“These starwinds are making me sicker by the minute. What will you do if the nomads don’t know where Daxin is?”
“Tie you to that old gelding and sell you both to the slavers as a package deal.”
“You don’t want to do that. I can help you, if you help me.”
“Don’t need no help, Shep. And in case you was too sick to notice how many people that tall fella had in his misfit gang back there, I ain’t got time to help you. Find somebody else to heckle.”
“All I’m trying to do is get you out of this before it’s too late. All three of us are going to be toes-up if that freakshow has anything to say about it. How’d you get wrapped up with a bunch of bandits like them, anyway?”
“Used to be one of ‘em.”
“I ran with ‘em too, for a while,” Weaver added. “Right around the time Lokes and I first met.”
<
br /> “You all did seem to know each other awfully well,” Toler said. He’d been silently hoping their little showdown would come to blows. It was the best hope he’d had of escaping them yet. “How did you end up owing them money?”
“We done run off with it,” Lokes said with a chuckle. “Years ago, the gang stole itself a nice chunk of hardware. We planned to split it nine ways, of course; same slice of the profits for each of us. I ain’t never been much for pie… always been more of a sandwich fella myself. Turned out Jal was the same way. She and I, we packed up the booty and took off in the night. Run straight through the next day without a stop. Hit the city and disappeared. They caught up with us eventually. Wasn’t for a long time, but they found us.”
“You don’t think you two could hold your own against them in a fight?” Toler asked. “They don’t look like much.”
“They’re as talented a bunch as I ever seen.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“That’s the idea, Shep.”
They came to the end of the narrow side street and emerged onto a wider road lined with gutted shops and restaurants. The light-star shone high overhead, so they clung to the shadows of the awnings along the sidewalk. Dust clouded the air around a building whose side had collapsed in a heap of rubble. The building’s boldly lettered sign was half-buried beneath, but Toler could still see what it said: QuickStop Express. Next door was a place called AmpCo Electronics. Beyond that, a more whimsical sign read: Winston’s Chocolates.
“Here’s the place,” said Lokes. “Looks like the quake done got it pretty good.” He and Weaver dismounted, waving away the dust. “Let’s go, Shep. You’re comin’ with.”
They helped Toler off his horse. As they pulled him down, the blade beneath his leathers began to slip. He could feel it pressing against his ribs, the tip poking his waist, the hilt tucked beneath his armpit. He clenched his arm tight against his side to hold it in place and nearly toppled over onto Lokes as he slid from the saddle.
